Adam and Eve : Part 2

Yeay I am finally done with my second year medicine, all praise to Allah! Hopefully the results will turn out great insyaAllah !

That aside, now I can continue and finish up the story about Adam and Eve. I'd like to make it clear that I am rewriting all of this from Mufti Menk's lecture on this issue with a bit of editing to make it in chunks we can all process. :)

How did Eve come about? According to some of the narrations Adam was the only one of mankind in the heaven and naturally he was feeling very lonely, so he asked Allah for something that could give him comfort. So one day, when he got up, he noticed someone very similar to him. In the hadith, Allah said He created from Adam his spouse, which was Eve. She was created from Adam's rib. Actually there's something special and meaningful about the story of the creation of women. As we know, the rib is bent and if we were to straighten it, it might crack. Similarly, it shows that we need to be very very careful in treating a woman. It is telling the menfolk to be careful of how you handle the women, be very kind to them, be very tolerant and be very patient with them because pushing them will only break them instead of doing any good, which is true. From just that, we can already realize that a woman was given to a man as a gift after great prayer. We need to understand this so that we can appreciate the blessing Allah has given to us.

Adam saw Eve and he asked her, ''Who are you?''. She said "I am a woman". Adam asked again "Why were you created?" and Eve answered "I am created as a pair for you, to give you comfort and company". Subhanallah :) This is the main reason for a real marriage as you are meant to be getting comfort from it. The companionship should be giving you lots of goodness, peace, harmony not the feeling of burden or unhappiness. 

After that, an unfortunate incident happened resulting in Adam and Eve being instructed to leave the heaven and go to the Earth along with Iblis. Allah s.w.t told Adam a.s "I will continue sending you guidance, and your progeny and offsprings, guidance. Whoever follows the guidance they won't go astray and they won't be unfortunate'' Subhanallah :) So this is why the Quran is here, as a guidance for us promised by Allah s.w.t.

Maybe for those who lack contentment, it is because they have drifted far away from Allah s.w.t. and that is the time to come back to Allah. Allah s.w.t said ''Whoever turns away from My reminders that I keep sending them, they will be having a life which is very narrow, full of difficulties, lack of contentment and so on. When we resurrect him on the day of qiamah, he will be blind.'' So he will say, ''O Allah how did you resurrect me blind when I could see whilst I was alive on the Earth?'' And Allah s.w.t. will say ''Didn't we send you reminders and you turned a blind eye against those reminders? So today we resurrected you blind."

May Allah not make us from among those.

Back to Adam a.s, we asked where was him placed when he was sent down to Earth. According to the narrations, we don't know for certain but there's a possibility that he came down at Sri Lanka, a place now known as Adam's Peak mountain. Only Allah knows. As for Eve, she came down at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The name itself, Jeddah when translated means the grandmother, named after Eve. So now, they started looking for each other. Adam a.s started to walk across the Earth to find Eve and so did she. According to the historian, they met in Arafah but Allah knows best. Somehow I see this as an example of when we are separated from our spouse, be it due to an argument or anything, it should hurt us and makes us want to get back together instead of waiting for another person to come along. Adam a.s knew he has a wife and he walked half the globe to get her. Such an effort :)

All in all, that's a glimpse of Mufti Menk's lecture about Adam a.s  that I would like to immortalise in my blog  because it is one of my favourite love stories :) Till then, Assalam!